CHAPTER 21 The EIlemy Within: False Religion

THE influences upon ancient Israel were many and' various, •and . . we cannot fairly blame the Canaanitesfor all the facets of Israelite life which attracted the rebukes of the prophets. It is . a remarkable fact that some of thebitterest enemies who ever confronted. the Old Testament prophets were' not ' priests and worshippers of Baal but other prophetsofYahweh. The Israelite faith was byino means monolithic in character; there was ,i officia1" religion, to be foundamong the priests, "prophetic" religion as evidenced in the prophetic books of the Old Tesfament, and no doubt a great deal of"popular" religion as welL While recognizing the differences, we must not on the other hand draw too sweeping contrasts between them. It is notoriously difficult to find appropriate terminology to distinguish the Old Testament prophets from ' their prophetic opponents. The latter no doubt came from the ranks of cult-prophets, that is to say the prophets who were Closely associated with the sanctuaries, and who therefore depended on the "official" religion for· their.livelihood. The "writing prophets" of the Old Testament,on the other hand, .seem to have been alt()gether. more independent,althoughithasbeen conjectured that some ofthem too may have been attached to sanctuaries. One thing that seems to have marked them out is their "vocation' " their personal experience of a call frOJ.IlYah'-Veh to the prophetic' office. The Old Testarnent prophets who' received the most significant attention from ."false prophets"were Micaiah, Micah and Jeremiah. The issue was simple enough in the first case: Micaiah's , fellow prophets were assuring King Ahab that he would achieve un­ qualified military success . in his . campaign at .. Ramoth-gilead, whereas Micaiahhimselfwasconvinced that Ahab was going to his death(l Kings 22). Events 'swlftlyproved Micaiah in the right of it. 208 KINGDOMS OF THE LORD His opponents were proven false by the mere fact that their predic- . tions were not fulfllled; this is the test of false prophecy offered by Deuteronomy 18:21f. They were not telling deliberate lies, however; they spoke out of conviction, and were most indignant at Micaiah's allt::gation that their oracles were false. Micaiah's own description of the scene in the heavenly court in itself implies that the other pro­ phets did not know they were being deceived. No doubt they were convinced of the righteousness of Ahab's cause - did not Ramoth­ gilead legitimately belong to Israel? When we turn to the Book of ·Micah, we find that the false prophets of Judah a century after Micaiah's time were equally sin­ cere iri their convictions, and indeed held to a coherent theology. To be sure, Micah accused them of promising prosperity "in return for a morsel offood" (3:5); but a careful study of the text of the Book of Micah reveals that whatever their motives they based their comfort­ ing predictions on solid religious beliefs. This fact has recently been clarified by a penetrating exegesis of relevant sections of the book by Professor A. S. van der Woude of Groningen.l Passages which had previously puzzled readers because of their rapid alternation between promises and threats can now be seen as disputes between Micah and the false prophets: the warnings are his, the specious optimism theirs. We must therefore place quotation marks against certain verses in Micah; similarly St. Paul in Colossians 2:21 was not counselling a policy of "Do not handle this, do not taste that, do not touch the other", but quoting his opponents' advice - in order to refute it. . In Micah 3: 11 there is not the slightest doubt that the false prophets are the speakers. " 'Is not the LORD among us?' they say; 'then no disaster can befall us' . " The ground of their optimism was their certainty of Yahweh's presence in their midst; was not the temple at Jerusalem his throne? In Micah 2:7 we hear their voice again - "ranting", Micah tells us in the preceding verse. " 'Is the LORD's patience truly at an end? Are these his deeds? Does not good come of the LORD's words? He is the upright man's best friend'." Micah had been solemnly warning his fellow-citizens that the Assyrian army's approach heralded utter disaster for Judah, a fact which should have been obvious to any realist. The false prophets' reply was to the effect that God could not possibly lose patience with his own "upright" people, and since God controlled history, the Assyrian menace was negligible. Therefore they could accuse Micah of heart­ less cruelty, deliberately causing distress of mind to good folk who had nothing really to worry about. His gloomy prognostications, they claimed, amounted to stripping "the cloak from him that was . 1. Cf. A. S. van der Woude, "Micah in dispute with the pseudo-prophets", VT 19 (1969), pp. 244-260. :cfIl -g ca ~ '2 ca

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- THE ENEMY WITHIN: FALSE RELIGION 209 safe", and taking away "the confidence of returning warriors" (verse 8). But in point of fact Sennacherib's army caused havoc to the cities of Judah, .and went on to invest Jerusalem. Would not these grim realities silence the optimists once and for all? Not a bit of it! They had their answer ready, probably even beforehand:

I will assemble you, the whole house of Jacob: I will gather together those that are left in Israel. . , I will herd them like sheep in a fold, like a grazing flock which stampedes at the sight of a man. So their leader breaks out before them, and they all break through the gate and escape, and their king goes before them, and their king goes before them, .and the LORD leads the way. (Micah 2:12f.)

Nor was it merely orderly escape they predicted; their ideas, as enunciated in the next chapter, were even niore grandiose:

Now many nations are massed against you; they say, "Let her suffer outrage, let us gloat over Zion." But they do not know the LORD's thoughts nor understand his purpose; for he has gathered them like sheaves to the threshing-floor.

Start your threshing, daughter of Zion; for I will make your horns of iron, • . I your hooves wdl I make of bronze, and you shall crush many peoples. You shall devote their ill-gotten gain to the Lord, their wealth to the Lord of all the earth. (Micah 4: 11 Cf. )

These hopeful prophets, then, in terms reminiscent of Micaiah's rivals' false promises to Ahab, maintained that the people of Jerusalem would sally forth from their beleaguered city and utterly crush the foe. In point offact, the siege was lifted, and Jerusalem did escape Sennacherib's wrath; but Judah gained no military glory whatever in the process. 2 These men's promises were hollow, as events soon proved; but a little reflection will show that their confidence in God, and their con­ victions as to what he would do, could be paralleled more than once in canonical Scripture. Ezekiel 38f., for instance, portrays the utter defeat .in Palestine of the heathen nations, led by Gog; but of course

2. See above, pp. 110ft. 210 KINGDOMS 01" THE LORD

those chapters were written long after Micah' s day. Where did the false prophets and their followers find the promises they abrogated to themselves? The answer seems to be, above all, in the liturgy of the temple. That liturgy, so far as we are acquainted with it at all, is embedded i~ the Book of Psalms, much of which seems to have formed part of' 'the hymn-book of the first temple" (just as much as of the second, postexilic temple). In Christian circles we are familiar with the fact that a consider­ able number of Psalms are not only prophetic in character, but fmd their fulfIlment very adequately in the work of Christ; indeed, the New Testament supports such an interpretation. Psalm 2, for example, has often been called a "Messianic p§alm"; and it is associated plainly with our Lord in several places in the New Testa­ ment.3 Psalm 110, again, which links God's king with that andent king of Jerusalem, Melchizedek, is thoroughly discussed in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and invariably in terms of the person of Christ. But we should not suppose that such Psalms were intended as a sort of pen-portrait, in order that contemporaries of Jesus of Nazareth should be able to recognize in him their Messiah; rather, they set out the pattern of what the ideal king in Jerusalem ought to be like - and when Jesus at last came, the first Christians realized that he, and only he, lived up to the pattern. If, however, we study the. individual statements in such Psalms, we can see that many of them could have been true of the kings of Judah; indeed, .most of them are fair descriptions of the founder of the dynasty; David himself. God did undeniably enthrone David as his king on Zion (cf. Psalm 2:6), where he .did in a sense take up the succession of Mel~ chizedek (cf. fsalm 110:4); David was undoubtedly enabled to break his foes with a rod of iron, shattering them like a clay pot (cf. Psalm 2:9), and to take over foreign nations as his inheritance (cf. Psalm 2:8). There are dimensions, to be sure, greater than those applicable (in aliteral fashion, at any rate) to David; Jesus was Son of God in a way that David never was. It is undeniable that the Davidicking was styled the son of God, however, for 2 Samuel 7: 12ff. predicates precisely that title of Solomon. Psalm 2, then, we may well suppose, formed part of the coronation liturgy for each successor on David's throne, if the sentence "This day I become your father" (verse 7) offers any clue.4 Nathan's prophecy to David, recorded in 2 Samuel 7, indicates that from the very beginning of the dynasty God made wonderful promises to the king, promises which linked together the future of the Jerusalem sanctuary and of the line ofDavid. A single sentence (in verse 14) warned that if a Davidic king did wrong, God would .' . . . 3. Acts 4:25f., 13:33; Hebrews 1:5, 5:5; 2 Peter 1:17; Revelation 2:26f. 4. Cf. J. H. Eaton, Psalms: introduction and commentary (TBC: London, 1967), pp. 31-34" " .' . • . THE ENEMY WITHIN: FALSE RELIGION 211 punish him; the promises, accordingly, thoughthey never failed to point ahead, were conditional. to the extent that they might be reversed in any particular generation. The promises were the stipulations of one Party in a covenant the existence of which is evidenced in 2 Samuel 23:5; for his part, the Davidic king must have taken upon himself strict obligations bothto obey God's decrees and to serve the interests of God's people. We may make a shrewd guess that the covenant obligations of the king included the duty of main­ taining the laws laid down . at Sinai, and that thus the Davidic covenant was in some way firmly attached to the Sinai covenant. The beginning of each reign, therefore, will have seemed a time of high promise, to king and people alike: the option was open to the new king to fulfll his side of the covenant, and then God would surely fulfll his covenanted obligations. Perhaps - or so it is widely conjectured - there was an annual ceremony in which the divine promises were rehearsed in liturgical fashion and claimed afresh. We can understand how it happened that in the process of time the divine promises became more and more emphasized, but the royal obligations more and more muted. Very few men in public life even in our own enlightened times are prepared to admit openly even to errors and mistakes, let alone to total failure to fulfll specific obliga­ tions; we have all become somewhat cynical regarding election promises. What king of ancient] udah, then, was going to admit that he had departed from his covenant obligations? And what courtier or priest was going to have the courage to tell the king the truth? All too few, evidently. The great prophets had the perspicacity to see through the facade; but the great majority of the cult-prophets, that is to say those who depended for diehlivelihood on the whole royally-patronized machinery of temple and sanctuary, c()nveniently shut their eyes to breaches of the ancient covenant traditions and laws, and pinned their faith on the divine promises they saw. written large in the temple liturgies. . The temple rites thus had the effect of bolstering up a partial truth which amounted to a lie. 5 If we today read Psalm 2, for example, as the Word of God~ with Christ in. our mind's eye, our faith in Christ is ,stimulated; but if an ancient ]udaean priest, .prophet or wor~ shipper recited it, equally convinced that it was the Word of God, but applying it automatically to the monarch of his own day, his faith was stimulated in quite the wrong direction, and he became dogmatically.convinced that God would grant miracul()us victory to Judah in the immediate future. He certainly became blind to political realities,. and indeed historic~l realities too.

5. Did the ritual, as it developed under the monarchy, gradually play down the king's responsibilities? Psalm 89·, at least, would suggest 'otherwise ·- notl;! verses 30ff, in

6. Cf. Jeremiah 7:21£f.; Amos 5:21-25. On the vexed questionoftheinterpreta­ tion 'Of such passa.ges; see especially D. E. Cowan, "Prophets, Deuteronomy and th~syncretistic c~lt in Israel ~ ' in J. C.Rylaarsdam (cd.), Transitions inl)iblical Schola;ship (Chicago,1968), pp. 93-112. THE ENEMY WITHIN: FALSE RELIGION 213 , Afterthe division of Solomon's kingdom; the Northern Kingdom , did not' of course look.to David's line for 'salvation, but nevertheless a very similar theology of hope developed there. The monarchy was no very stable institution in theNorth,but there too sanctuary and king were firmly bound together, as we can see from the interesting altercation between the prophet Amos and the priest Amaziah at Bethel, recorded in Amos 7. Amos predicted doom for sanctuary and king alike; and in angry reply, Amazia.htold him, "Be off, you seer! Off with you toJudah! " ,; But never prophesy again 'at Bethel, for this is the king's sanctuary. " 'That the same theologicallymotivatedi political ' optimism was to be found in the Northern Kingdom is evidenced by Amos, again. Evidently . there existed a popular expectation of' 'the day of the LORD" (cf. Amos 5:18). Such an expectation r1.lns through the Old Testament and on into the New; but what did it signify for the eighth century citizen ofIsrael? Whatever precisely he expected, there is no doubt that it was an optimistic anticipation, in view'of Amos's'warning that the day ofYahweh would in fact mean dark­ ness and gloom. The origins and content of this item of Israelite belief have been· much disc1.lssed , and debated, but it seems not improbable that the background to it was provided by ancient days of battle, when Y3.hweh had given his people viCtory over their enemies, especially perhaps under the heroes of the Book ofJudge~.7 If this be so, then once again we can see how political optimisrngrew out. of .faith in Yahweh; what he ' had done for Israel long before, through the leadershipofa Deborah or a Gideon,he would surely do again through the medium of the pres(!ntJdngin Saniaria. If some realists pointed out that Israel's ru:~i~~ ~ere puny compa.reglwith the mighty Assyrian war machine, the ready reply~ soconvinc­ ingly theological! -was that Gideon had won the day· against Midian with a mere 300 men in the face ofa colossal army. By the year 721 B. C. , the Day of the Lord had indeed dawned for the Northern Kingdom ~ and it had proved to be utter darkness and unrelieved gloom for Israel, as Amos had 'predicted. The Assyrians swept ,' away 'the monarchy, and any Israelite false hopes attached to .the person of the king were for ever crushed. Twenty years later Judah almost suffered the same fate, but not quite. Jerusalem,almost aloneofthe cities ofJudah, escaped the ravages of the .Assyrian soldiery, .and King Hezekiah managed to retain his throne. Froin our standpoint in history, we can see that both Micah and Isaiah were vindicated; ultimately; . the latter had prophesied that Jerusaiem would 110t fall, since the temple still symbolized the reality ofYahweh's p~esence init, whereas Micahhad prophesied that Jerusalem's days were numbered, and that itswickedJless inevitably ' 7. Onthe Day ofy;ihweh, see especially G. von Rad,OldTesta.menl Theology (ET Edinbur~h and London, 1962-5), vol. ii, p. 119-125. . ., " . KINGDOMS OF THE LORD presaged, its fall. , Isaiah's prophecy was fulfIlled in 701 B.C.; Mkah's had to wait a full century more for its fulfIlment. "The mills of God grind slowly." But all too many citizens ofJudah in 700 B.C. and the century that followed refused to believe that Micah had been a true prophet;8 on the contrary, they turned Isaiah's prediction into a dogma that would hold true for all time and in all circumstances. God, they were convinced, would never let Jerusalem fall into enemy hands; the enemy would;always be defeated, if onlYiit the ve,ry gates; Jerusalem had neve,i:, once fallen since David had captured it some 300 years before, and the very passage of ti~e increased their convictions. But Isaiah's w()rds of moral cOlldemnation were con­ veniently forgotten. Not even Nebuchadrezzar's capture of Jerusalem in 597 B.C. provided achallenge to suchdoglllas; the Babylonian conqueror left the city and the temple standing, and did riot even put an end, to the Davidi~dynasty, althougll he did deportKingJehoiachill.lt would even seemthat~iseyent', political disaster though itwas,was hailed as yet another, triumph for the ,dogma! , It is undoubtedly, true ,th3:t Jeremiah, both before and after ,597 B.C., was confronted, by aii:"vgant false prophets tO ,an unprecedent~d extent.9 He, more than anypfhi,s predecessors, f~lt the menace offalse religion, the threat()f "falsehood" (Hebrew sheqer), as a recent book, more literally, des- cribes it.lo i Jeremiah's response to this ,situation enables us to ,discern the general tenor of his opponents' teaching; and we sometimes read their statements expressis , verbis. One of theircatchworqs , was evidently, "This .place is,.the temple of the ,LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the , ~ORp / ?1l Another favourite, phrase, as they stood in the fancied security of the temple courts,was "We are safe", or (more literally) "'We are delivered" Geremiah '7:10). Jeremiah's bitter commentary on this dictum was that (for the moment!) they were "safe" - ,safe to proceed with aUthe immoral , and, unethical behaviour to which they were addicted, which he represents ', as oppression of, the poor, repeated breaches of the covenant laws, and of course idolatrous practices into the bargain. Securejnunshakeable dogm~ ' ~ndthe ,stout temple walls, "one prophet, Hananiah by name, only a few months after the debacle of 5g7,confj.cll;:lltJ.ypredicteq that within ,two years all wquld be well,­ dle, exil~ over ,King.] elloiachinllo,xp,e 'again, and the yoke of .Baqy~ lon,broken. Hist()ry records that Hananial19ied two,months later. 7""

S. ' See, below, pp. 243ff. " 9. See below, p. 256. 10. T. W. Overholt, The threat ojfalsehood: a study in the theology of the Book ojJeremiah (SBT ii,16: London, 1970). 1 L Jeremiah 7:1'., Ol!-e)~ inevitably re~inded of pur, L,ord' $ words, about "vain repetition" (Matthew 6:7): , , " ". , ., THE ENEMY WITfUN: FALSE RELIGION 215 an eve.nt which in itself vindicated Jeremiah's more soinbre prophecies .....;... but also thadt was riot until the much more crushing national disaster of 587 B.C. that the voice of false prophecy was finally stilled. 12 One significant insight ofjeremiah',s into theriature and character of this 'false religion is recorded in Jeremiah 7: 8fL 'Shrines like the Jerusalem temple had long been ~e placestowh~ch those giIilty of homicideIIlight flee for refuge; if their deed had been acci­ dental manslaughter, the sanctuary proved to be a sanctuary indeed, but if IIlurder were proven, then the slayer must be taken from the altar and handed over to the avenger of blood. Jeremiah claimed that the complacent Jerusalem populace was in effect gaining unlaw­ ful asylum from the penalty oftheir deliberately evil deeds by resort~ ing to the Jerusalem temple. The temple, therefore, had become "a robbers' cave".13 The logic of his position was of course that the guilty must be; and would inevitably be, dragged from the sanctuary to which they had resorted; The temple ofYahweh gave shelter only to those who deserved asylum. ' . We may t1.Ilow the prophets to draw our attention to another area of ancient Israel's life and thought which sometimes tends to be forgotten. In a critique of falSe religion, Isaiah 29: 13f. enunciates Yahweh's view ofJudah thus:

Because this people approach me with their mo~ths . and honour me with their lips ' while ' their hearts ' a.re far. frorn me, and their religion is but a precept of men; ,learnt by rote, therefore 1 will yet again shock this people; >" adding shock to shock: ' , ' :" ';:Y' ,' \ , ," " and the. wisdom of their wise men shall vanish and the discernmentof the discerning shall be lost. J ~r~miah also"had a wordfor the wise aeremiah 8:9f.): " . . .. " ~ The wise. .are put to~hame, they are/dismayed and have lost their wits. They have spurned the word of the LORD, and wh.at sort of wisdom is theirs,? ..• Prophets and priests are frauds, everyone of them.

' These passages show thafthe OldTestamentprophets had their criticisms ." ofa , professi'o~al > group who , stood", outside' -the more religious-and cultic circles of priests and prophets. The term' 'wise" and "wise men" (Hebrew chakham, chakhamim) do not always in the Old Testament designate a profession, but very often. they -refer

ui; Jeremiah 28 describes the events outlined in this paragraph. 13. Cf. T. W, Overholt, op, ,it., pp. 17f. ' 216 KINGDOMS OF THE LORD

specifically to what we may call the administrative class in the king­ dom- the circles which provided. the king with his advisers and ministers of state. These circles also had some educational funCtions, though we are ill informed as to the exact nature of the educational . system. Perhaps the nearest equivalent in English to the Hebrew chakhamim . is the word "intelligentsia", which suggests not only people occupying intellectually demanding positions in society but also those who take acertainpride in the fact-Without doubt book learning was much prized in the ancient world, and the "wise" were the men who both studied books and produced them. In Judah (as often elsewhere) the king was their patron. The Book of Prov~rbs testifies to the patrona~e of both Solomon and Hezekiah, and also to the invoivement ofthe professional "wise men" in the collection arid publicatioll.ofproverbial material. 14 Iris ipteresting, moreover, tha.t Proverbs 30f; offers material which is associated with non-Israelites. In fact, thewisdommovementinJudahand Isra.elWas simply part of a much more widespread phenomenon of the ancient world; We may observe that the fullest biblical description of the equipment of the professional wise man occurs in thecantextof.a foreign court (although the wise men happened to be Jewish). Daniel and hiscom­ panions at the Ba.byloniancourt are described as "at home inall branches of knowledge, well-informed, intelligent, and fit for the service in the royal court"; they were to .be instructed "in the literature and la.nguage of the Chalclaeans" , and" their training was to last for three years" (Daniel1:4f.). The international character of wisdom circles is fairly obvious simply from · a perusal ·()f~lle .•Book .of Proverbs. .Many . individual proverbs could be share.~ W'!tll virtually any nation of any period of history - they frequently'offer advice ofa timeless and universal character. Much of the material is purely secular in character, although a verse at the beginning of the book indicates tha.t the essential basis of ~isdo~ and wise conduct is true religion:. "The fear of the LORD is the beginning afknowledge" (1:7). Apart from a certain amount of material ~hich mentions Yahweh by name, much of Proverbs could be paralleled from avariety -of ancient wisdom documents from .Mesopotamia and Egypt. 15 But wemust not suppose that a fair quantity of "secular" content and of "pagan" affinities renders such literature of little or· no religious value - Proverbsisinthecanon of Holy· Scripture, and rightly so. The prophets certainly did Iiotattack the practice of wisdom as such; on the contrary, they made use of its methods on occasions, and very effectively: see for instance Isaiah 28:23-29 and Jeremiah 17:5-11,

14. Cf. Proverbs 1:1, 22 :17, 24:23, 25 :1. 15 . . See E. Jones,.f'roverbs and Ecclesiastes: introdUction and commentary (TBe.: London, 1961), pp. 32-41, for a list of examples of kin&ed material. · THE ENEMY WITHIN: FALSE RELIGION , 217 passages which would be equally at home in the Book of Proverbs. Amos's condemnation of the nations begins with a phraseology borrowed from proverbial material: "For three transgressions . •. and for four . •.. " (AmQs 1:3, 6, 9 etc;):16 Psalm lean well be described as a "wisdom psahn" ; which fact shows that wisdom con­ cepts and techniques found their way (by whatever route) into the temple.1iturgytoo; We may next instance the Book of Judges as a whole; which is the product ofawise man; that is tosaya man who studied the facts of his country's earlieF history, observed thatthere was arecurringpattern in it, and accordingly offered a philosophy of that history; the Book ,of Judges is an expanded proverb. Firially, even the Old Testament law-code explicitly speaks of wisdom, thus:

You must observe (God's statues and laws) carefully, and thereby you will display your wisdom ' and understanding to other peoples. When theyhec:lr about these statutes, they will say, 'What a wise and , understanding peopleihis great nation is!' (Deuteronomy 4:6)

There ca~ be no denying that,human wisdom, that is to say,the careful"ddiberateuse of the rational powers ~f observation ~md deduction ~hichGodha.s given men, is viewed throughout the;! Bible as one important, rnedium of divine revdation. , ' Why then, did an Isaiahand a Jeremiah choos~ tocriticize the professional wise men of their day? The prophets did not attack the office ill itself, any more thart they attacked.the priestly, .and prophetic offices as ·such. They recognized thatthe ordinary citi~en could n()t do without the guidarl(;e of th~ ' , priests, theorades'.9f the propheis"and the advice of the,wise meri (cf. Jeremiah 18: 18). The wise man's special commodity, this verse shows, was " ,advice" (Hebrew etsah); thus, noless than priests and pro~hets, hetookthe future into account, presuming totell his dientswhat was likely to happen and how they might best cope with the situation in which theyfound th~lnselves . Wecan appre,ciate, therefore, that the Old Testam~nt prophets' observedthat too often the, w~se men were just as guiltya.s the culti(; prophets and the priests of uttering coPtplacent reassll,fances insteacl()f ~rgent warflings, and predicting arosy and unrealistic future. . ,The potentialconflict between the prophetic wordf~oJll God and tbewise man's ','advice" c~nbe illustrated from Isaiah's career. When' the armies of,Isra.el and .Damascus descended',upon J udah and be~iegedJerusal(;!m, King Ahazin fright sought advice from his professional counsellors and also from Isaiah. "Do nothing - except trust in God" was the gist of the prophet's advice (Isaiah 7).

16. The . NEB rendering obscures the numerical phraseology, for which , ff. Proverbs 30:15-31. 218 KINGDOMS OF THE LORD

But the political savants of the day saw salvation in an appeal to Assyria for help; they knew on rational grounds that ihis policy would work,.and indeed it did, though at no little cost for Judah. They provided reasoning where Isaiah offered signs; and Ahaz preferred the former. The fact is that no man can absolutely predict the future on the basis of reason; there is always the unpredictable element,. the incalculable factor. The prophets objected, therefore, to any suggested policy which did not take God into account. Human reasoning was in itself good and necessary; but it must not be divorced from submission to the will and purposes of God, or. it would inevitably faiL In other words, the prophets found a certain arrogance in con­ temporary wisdom - always a characteristic of the intelligentsia in society, the more so when they have official, inthis .case royal; patronage. The prophets could be. particularly scathing about the wise men of other nations. Edom was renowned for sagacity; . but Jeremiah could say of it: "Is wisdom no longer to be found in Teman? Have her sages-no skill in counsel? Has their wisdolD decayed?" (49:7). The diplomats and politicians of Edom were in fact helpless in the face of imminent disaster; Jeremiah described the fate in store for them, and added, "Listen to the LORD's whole pur­ pose against Edomand all his plans againstthe people of Teman" (verse 20). The policies whichc'ount in history, said Jeremiah, are those of God,not man. ' The arrogance of some of J udah' s wise men is rebuked in Isaiah 5:21: "Shame on you! You who are wise in your own eyes and prudent in your own esteem." At the personal level, we can see in the Book ofJob how cruel and immoral an arrogant wisdom can be. One wonders' how many a 'good man's reputation has been per­ manently injured by the mechanical application of proverbs like "There'sno smoke without fire" . ' Reverting. to the case .of Ahaz and Isaiah, we observe that the policy ofAhaz \\Tas permitted.to be put into effect, even though it was a foolish and ill-advised stratagem . Mucl~ earlier, in David'·s reign, there is an interesting stOry ofa piece of brilliant strategy which was·overruled by sheer folly. Absalomneeded ady~ce.• how to achieve full victory and to secure his newly~wonthron~,andhe turned to a man whose wisdom was comparable with the oracles bf Yahweh themselves (2 Samuel 16:23). Ahithophel as usual proffered sound strategy; but Absalom, not content, sought further counsel, this time from his father's loyal adviser, and heard a different story. As we study Hushai's words (17:7ff.), we find a skilfulmixt:ure of emotive language, exaggeration and flattery -and itfound'aready ear. Why? "It was the LORD's purpose to frustrate Ahithophel;i; good 'advice and so bring disaster .. uponAbsalom" (17:14). King Rehoboam was another man who could not tell good advice THE ENEMY WITHIN: FALSE RELIGION 219 from bad, and it cost him more than half his kingdom (1 Kings 12: 1-17); again the historian tells us "the LORD had given this turn to the affair" (verse 15). Israel and Judah might have learned several lessons from such episodes. First, that since Yahweh con­ trolled their history, his revealed word - through his prophets, those who were prophets by vocation rather than profession ...,- . was the only sure pointer to the future. Secondly, the wise men could only extrapolate from past andpresent, .and therefore their predic­ tions should always be presented with duernodesty and heeded with caution. Thirdly, the very patrons of wisdom--'- and> even Solomon himself - were capable of the most egregious follies. ;" The first king of Israel once confesed, "I have been a fool, I have been sadly in the wrong" (1 Samuel 26:21). Even David, whose shrewd­ .ness was second to none, was once told to his face,"Your majesty>is as wise as the angel of God " - by a women who had just made a complete fool of him (2 Samuel 14:20). The presumptuous wordly-wise. politician was therefore not only the target for the strictures of Isaiah and Jeremiah , but also the living proof of the folly of kings (and few were as weak and/or foolish as the last three kings ofJudah). Now-onder the prophets sighed for a, king who should be victorious in battle, a model of equitable pre­ ceptand practice,but first and foremost, "in purpose wonderful", a "wonderful · counsellor" ,a > "Wonder-Counsellor~' (as various modern versions·render a familiar phrase from ·Isaiah 9 : 6) . . We are now in a position to offer some analysis of the false religion which was the chieLenemy of the Hebrew monarchy. Basically it consisted in breach of promise, coupled with an untroubled con­ science. All the great pre-exilicprophetswere deeply conscious of the extent .to which their contemporaries in Israel and J udah alike were guilty of breaking their coveIlanted vows to God. Yet the people's consciences were being dulled by the scrupulous exercise of religious practiCes. Evil deeds were being hidden under a veneer of piety, 'and indeed sheltered and thus encouraged by the official religion of the day . That the people censured by the prophets had "faith" is uIldeIliable; but it wasa. misplaced faith. To begin . with, it represented faith.in buildings and ·. rituals rather than in the·. God whom such buildings and rituals were designed to honour. It was thus a.faith in externals; ritual confessio~s of sin,and the sacrifices prescribed for sin,.took the place oL~i,f1cere self-examination and repentance. Secondly, it consisted.of a, .;faith in. certain parts of Holy Writ (as it came to be) to the detrim~~Yof others; Psalm 2 with all its promise was ·· proudly claimed and appropriated, whereas the Ten Commandments were recited (no · doubt) but quietly set aside; Isaiah's prophecies about the temple were on every lip, but his des­ criptionofhispeople' as a "sinful nation"; a "people loaded with 220 KINGDOMS OF THE LORD iniquity" whose sins were "scarlet" (Isaiah 1 :4, 18) was treated lightly, ignored if not forgotten. All too many people made the false assumption- that· to possess the Law of God was automatically to honour and obey it (cf. Jeremiah8:8f.). The false religion also comprised an uncritical acceptance of dogma. Those who believed that Jerusalem and .the temple would never fall could find ancient and genuine prophecies to support their viewpoint; but - as Jeremiah pointed out - the dogma failed the acid test of history, since Shiloh, formerly just as central and sacred to Israel as Jerusalem had now become, lay in ruins for anyone to seeCJeremiah 7:11£.). Even the very Word of God can become false if it is. treated as a collection of slogans (political or otherwise) to be employed like magical charms. Jeremiah himself showed a better way; when Hananiah in the name of Yahweh contradicted Jere­ miah's predictions and· proffered his own instead,· the startled Jeremiah did not immediately resort to cliches and dogmatic utter~ ances, but on the contrary went away to thinkthernatter over, and did not come back until he had a fresh message from God aeremiah 28). Perhaps most important of all, the. type of. religion which· the prophets repudiated was centred on a false theology, a wrong view of Gbd, a view which probably owed more than was imagined to Canaanite ways of thinking. The Canaanites' concept of deity was cyclic, governed by the seasons of the year but not by the passage of history; thus in a sense it was static, almost timeless. The Old Testa­ ment writers insist repeatedly, however, that the GodofIsrael is the Lord ofhistory and of the whole historical process. This o,utlook is nowhere more startlingly expressed than in Isaiah 43: 16ff., · where the prophet first makes reference to the Exodus, that unforgettable event way back in Israel's history, still lovingly and proudly remembered in every Jewish Passover celebration to this day, and having. called itto mind, dismisses it thus: "Ceaseto dwell on days gone by and to brood over past history. Here and now I will do' a new thing". The challenge follows - "Can you not perceive it?" It was this dynamic view of God which characterized the Old Testa­ ment prophets; hence they can unblushingly talk of God's "changing his mind" Or "repenting". If God wished to spare the Jerusalem of Isaiah's day, he was not in consequence bound to do the same inJeremiah's era. "God is not slavishly bound by his own decisions," writes H. W. Hertzberg, "but is almighty to such an extent that he is Lord even of them. Just as he takes the action of men into consideration in hjs decisions, so that omnipotence never means that man is deprived of his responsibility, so, too, the election of the king (Saul) is not irrevocable."17

17. H, W. Hertzberg, I and II Samuel: a commentary (OTL: London, 1964), p.126. THE ENEMY WITHIN: FALSE RELIGION 221

But the election of Jerusalem and of the house of David was ir­ revocable, was it not? The Old Testament prophet did not challenge the abiding truth of such divine promises; but he insisted that God could certainly set them aside for so long as he chose to do so; or even transmute them along new channels. So one prophet could predict an exile from the Promised Land of fully seventy years Oeremiah 29: 10), while another could speak of the transfer of the royal covenant promises from David's line to the nation as a whole (Isaiah 55: 3ff.). 18 (From the Christian standpoint, we should wish to add that this transfer was again only a temporary measure in God's plans.) Finally, we can probably deduce from the fact that the Old Testa­ ment prophets bracketed "the wise" with priests and false prophets that they were aware of a secularized religion, which operated too much on slogans and mechanical formulae, and which made ex­ pediency its god. Anything which took to itself the name of Yahweh but which patently breached the ethic taught in his covenant laws became the target of prophetic denunciation.

The Old Testament prophetic literature is our primary sourcebook for information on the false religion which we have described as the worst enemy of Israel and J udah during the period of the monarchy. Priestly intercession, prophetic forecasts, and the skil­ fully.devised policies of trained diplomats alike failed to divert God's chosen people from the collision course on which they were set. The true prophets did what they could to expose the false religion for what it was,. and hence have left on record for posterity an adequate description of it. But in investigating this topic we have, necessarily, looked at the prophets' words in a purely negative way, seeking to find out what they denied, not what they affirmed. They deserve more than that; and we must now make some endeavour to study these unique individuals in their own right, against the background of the history of their times.

18. This seems to be the most natural interpretation of the passage. Cf. C. R. North, The Second Isaiah (Oxford, 1964), pp. 257f.